A Different Species
by eclectictsunami
Summary: Cooper reflects on Audrey. Oneshot.


Audrey Horne was like nothing Special Agent Dale Cooper had ever encountered.

She was certainly not the girl next door. There was no sweet, sunny ordinariness about her that so many small-town teenage girls might project. She was no Donna Hayward. Audrey was sweet, but not sugar sweet. More like…strong, spicy sweet. There was nothing ordinary or commonplace about Audrey.

But she was certainly no Laura Palmer, with her dark secrets and her sick soul, her manipulations and her longing to break loose of the world that had entrapped her – adored by everyone, yet with no one around willing or able to save her when push came to shove. All her life, Laura had been abused, and she had been an abuser. She pushed Bobby Briggs into drugs, she pulled away from those who would have saved her and sought comfort in those who wanted her dead. She had longed for the darkness, the destruction, and the suffering.

Audrey had no such soul-sickness, Cooper knew. She was not hurtling towards her death as Laura had been, destroying herself and taking down everyone else around her. Not to say that Audrey wasn't mysterious, or that she didn't have darkness. She had all of those things. She had loneliness and a yearning that showed in her every movement, a yearning that she didn't even seem to be aware of.

Audrey certainly was a poor little rich girl, but she was more than that. She longed to be more, to have more, and Cooper knew it. He knew that she was probably replaying her abandonment issues with her father when she came to him, but the fact was that there was a strange sort of inborn sensuality with Audrey, that came neither from innocence nor experience, but something natural and strange. She was the most bewitching girl, the most bewitching _anything,_ that he had ever seen.

Audrey was devious and clever and rebellious and infinitely charming. She was dangerous, the kind of girl who could bewitch a man and run him into the ground. But Cooper didn't just want Audrey – he _liked _her. She was sharp-minded and strangely sweet, and she was loyal. Audrey Horne was not the kind of person who forgot a kindness.

There was something about her, certainly with her inborn youthful sensuality but with the awkwardness of a girl, something that was not quite womanhood, that made Cooper ache. He ached with compassion and desire and a longing to protect her. For all that she looked and acted so much older than her age – and not just in her sexuality, in her coal-black hair and husky voice and red lips and swaying hips and sharply curved eyebrows – he could see the kid in her sometimes, just for a moment, and the fact was, he wanted her for that too.

Cooper had fallen in love with Annie almost instantly. There seemed to be a pull towards her that he could not deny, that he could not explain. He got the sensation that he was finally finding something again – that she was what he had been looking for, and he had not even known it.

Now, going in and out of consciousness in his hotel bed, fresh from the hellish ordeals of the Black Lodge, he understood. Annie was Caroline. She may not have acted like her, she may not have even looked much like her, but the truth was that Annie was what he had lost, and he had fallen for her so instantly because it had been the feeling of finding Caroline, of saving her in a way he had never been able to in the reality of things. Annie had nearly killed herself before she had met Cooper. He hadn't been able to save Caroline, but he found Annie. Annie he could save.

Audrey wasn't Caroline. She wasn't someone he wanted to save. She reminded him of no one he had lost. No, Audrey was an extraordinary woman, something all her own. Cooper had pushed her away, he realized now, not because she was so young, not because she was involved in the case he was working on, although those were most certainly reasons, and good ones at that. No, he had pushed her away because she had frightened him – she had been the unknown, something he feared would crush him beyond what he could be saved from. Audrey was like nothing else in Agent Cooper's logical, calm, carefully ordered life. She was a spicy-sweet, eighteen-year-old femme fatale, and she was the most beautiful, the most terrifying woman Cooper had ever known.

Now he hardly cared. The truth was that if Cooper had met Audrey today, as a ten-year-old, he probably would have fallen in love with her anyway. If someone had told him that Audrey would break his heart, that she would be something else he would have to survive, he would not have cared. It didn't matter anymore.

Cooper opened his eyes slowly. Sheriff Harry Truman slowly materialized before him and he smiled slightly.

"Hiya, Harry," he called out, his voice soft.

"Coop!" Harry rushed over to him. "What happened back there? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Harry," Cooper assured him, a light smile still on his lips.

"Can I…" Harry gave one of his expansive shrugs. "Can I get you anything?"

"Some water, if you wouldn't mind," said Cooper, his throat dry and cracking slightly. Harry stood up quickly to get it for him. "And…Audrey."

Harry stopped and turned, his face almost a little comical in its incredulity. "Audrey _Horne?" _

"Yes."

Harry continued to stare, eyes slightly narrowed. "You…got anything you want to tell me, Coop?" he asked, both nervousness and a slight edge of humor in his voice.

"Not yet, Harry," Cooper said with a smile. "I'll let you know."

Harry left the room, and Cooper closed his eyes again. Yes, Audrey Horne was a different species entirely.


End file.
